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TIL about Australian drug smuggler David McMillan who is the only Westerner to have successfully escaped Bangkok's notorious Klong Prem prison. He cut his cell bars with hacksaws, scaled seven inner walls, then mounting the outer wall using a bamboo ladder.

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6EGLW TIL that the Tarantula Nebula, a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud over 160,000 light years distant, contains the most luminous known star. The nebula’s luminosity is so great that if it were as close to Earth as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would cast shadows on the ground.
E8oP TIL: January 29, 1845: “The Raven” published in the New York Evening Mirror. The poem was enormously popular and soon made Poe a household name, but it did not bring Poe any financial success. He received $9 for the poem.
91XD TIL that in 1990, the first documented Crash between two Cars fitted with Airbags, two 1989 Chrysler LeBaron, occurred; both Drivers walked away with minor Injuries from a Crash they would not have survived without Airbags (Photos in Comments)
Yp4EW TIL of Sybil Ludington, who rode double the length of Paul Revere at only 16 years old to alert Americans that the British were coming. She was personally thanked by George Washington for her service
BrKr TIL Russell Crowe was unhappy with the screenplay of Gladiator. The famous line “In this life or the next, I will have my vengeance” he initially refused to say, telling writer ”Your lines are garbage but I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even garbage sound good”.